"Thank you, son."
Zap stuttered, "Don't be going in there… he's a gonner in there… Get in there he'll bloody kill you, like him… "
"All right, young 'un, who's been killed?"
" Y o u r copper," Kev said.
" W h o b y? "
" B y Colt," Zap said.
The Sergeant, middle-aged and heavy, ran for his car and his radio.
He stood above the police constable.
Again the slither of feet on the flags of the back bar and the heave of the door of the back bar. Billy and Zack gone.
He wanted to go to his father. He wanted to sit beside the bed in which he had last seen his mother. He wanted to flop on the bed in the room that had been his. The room was the shrine to his youth. His father had told him that, after the raid by the Regional Crime Squad, after the room had been searched by armed detectives, his mother had gone into the room and restored it just as it had been when they had first sent him away to the boarding school at the coast near Seaton in Dorset…
"Please, Colt, hurry…"
Bissett coming across the back bar towards him.
"… We have to go."
"Shut u p. "
" T o the ferry…"
"Shut up, damn you."
"I was just trying to say…"
Bissett's hand pulling at his arm. Colt dragged the fingers off his sleeve.
"Don't touch me, don't ever cling to m e. "
Old Brennie was on his feet, and nodding gravely towards old Vic behind the bar counter, the way he always nodded when he had supped up his beer and it was time to walk home, and he'd stop halfway down the road, like he always did, and empty his bladder into the privet hedge at the front of the comprehensive schoolteacher's garden.
There was the bleat of Bissett's voice in his ear. "Why don't we go…? "
Because going was for ever. Going now was never to return.
All the months in Oz, all the weeks on the big laden tanker, all the long days of the training in Baghdad and the long nights in the Haifa Street Housing Project were bearable only because there was the certainty that one month, one week, one day and one night he would return to the village and the love of his father and his mother. When he went this time, he was gone for ever, he was never to return.
" OK., O.K., " Colt said.
He saw that Fran squatted now on the floor and that she stared into the half-obscured face of the police constable. He would finish his drink. They would remember him in the back bar of the village pub for ever and a day because he had finished his drink and then he had gone out into the night, never to return.
He lifted the glass. Three gulps and he would finish the glass, just as he would have finished the glass in three gulps if the police constable had not walked in to warn of Zack's car and Johnny's car with the lights left on in the car park.
Colt grinned, "Cheers, Dr Bissett."
The Duty Inspector at Warminster gave his order. The pub was to be surrounded. All possible light was to be thrown from headlights and flash lamps at the front and rear and sides of the pub. The blue lamps on the roofs of the police vehicles were to be switched on.
Over the radio link, he told his Sergeant, "Just keep them bottled up there, George. The heavy crowd's close to you now.
Just keep them bottled, pray God they don't do a runner."
There was the racing of vehicle wheels across the loose gravel of the car park, the crunch of the brakes, the beam of light cutting through the thin curtains of the back bar. And the white light was mixed with the flash of the blue, penetrating.
Colt choked on the last swill of his glass.
The light was over Bissett's face, white and blue, dappled like sunshine and cloud.
His glass slammed down onto the table. He drew the Ruger from his belt and the foresight caught at the waist of his trousers and there was the rip of the material… He would never be taken… and Bissett cowered away from him.
Fran said, " Y o u shouldn't have done it, you didn't need to hurt him… "
She had her hand, rough and callused and worn and the hand that he loved, cupped under the head of the policeman. She had turned his body over as if she believed that were the way to help him to breathe.
He felt the clammy damp of a prison cell.
One more, one more for the road, and when he looked to the bar counter he saw that old Vic had gone. He had the gun in his hand and he advanced across the bar towards Bissett, and bissett shrank from him.
He saw it go. Erlich saw the first flutter beats of the ghost flight.
It was gone without sound. There was a scudding moment of moonlight, enough to catch at the wide wingspan ol the owl.
There was the silence of the flight, then the sharp warning cry of the bird, and it was gone.
He heard the movement of the cars down at the other end of the road through the village, and when he stood to his full height he could see, slashed by the winter trees, the lights that were white and blue.
He came from his hiding place. He walked across the Manor House's lawn and onto the drive to the road.
Ahead of him was the facade of the pub, bathed in warm lights.
He walked forward. This was his war. Colt was his He saw policemen crouched down behind the opened doors of their cars, and far away in the night he heaid the clatter of a helicopter.
He walked to the Sergeant.
"My name's Erlich, Federal Bureau ol Investigation
"Oh yes. Heard about you from young Desmond Young lad just told me …"
"You have him in there? Colt?"
"Right now I do. If he doesn't do a runner…''
"You got firearms?"
"On the way."
"What you got to stop him running?"
"There's nine of us."
"Where is he?"
"Back bar, through the side entrance, it's where he was last Erlich pulled the Smith and Wesson from the holster at his belt. The Sergeant didn't seem to want to argue. Erlich thought the Sergeant was bright, wasn't going to fuss that a Fed was on his territory, and armed. Round the corner of the building, into the glare of the light came the girl and a youth with a shaven head and tattoo work over his arms and they carried the slumped weight of a policeman. Erlich remembered him, and he remembered his cup of tea on the best china and homemade cakes. And he remembered the girl and the way that she had stared her hatred into the torch beam when she had come to take away her dead dog.
He walked forward and the headlights threw his shadow huge against the front stonework of the pub. He could hear, mingled with the wind, the closing thump of the helicopter's rotors.
Colt was his.
The military policeman locked the door behind him.
The Station Officer carried the tray into his office.
The Swede was crouched on the low camp bed that had been made up for him, and there was a second bed against the far wall from the door. The Station Officer put the tray down on his desk.
He took out from his pocket, where it was awkward, his P. P. K. pistol and laid it on the desk alongside the tray of sandwiches with the bottle of champagne.
"Will you surrender me?"
"Give you up? Good God, no."
" D i d Bissett get onto the flight?"
" H e was blocked."
"Thank God. "
"It's what you risked your life for… The champagne comes with warm wishes from your friends in Tel Aviv. "
The Swede started to eat, and when he drank he coughed and then giggled his appreciation.
He watched.
With fast and controlled movements, Colt had the pistol cleared and the magazine out and there was the dead metal rattle of the mechanism firing, and then Colt had checked each round before feeding it into the stick magazine.
Bissett watched.
They were going to break out. He did not have to be told.